And now we are about to experience, it seems, at the scale of a few days an event that may push the current year into infamy among three decades of Arctic Ice melting; a storm is brewing in the Arctic, which together with a wind-generating high pressure system, may blast the ice off much of the Arctic Sea. This is normal … the storms being part of the ice melt. What happens is this: Every time there is a storm or set of storms, the rate of melt goes up and in between stormy periods it slows. You can see this in the minor wiggly-wobbly-ness happening within a given year of Arctic Sea ice melt like in this graph:We are about to hit a new wobbly. A big one, I think.

Just a note on another pet subject (drought) Noticed an article in an old issue of Scientific American , October 24, 1846 (Vol 2 No. 5)

A late St. Louis paper states that the river was so low that the ferry-boats could not cross, while the Pittsburgh papers report 10 feet water in the Ohio River at that place. The Connecticut has been lower than ever before known.

I’m a big fan Steve, but isn’t all this focus on the highly erratic and unpredictable summer sea-ice melt just giving a hostage to fortune? A big storm could blow up like it did last year and we could be looking at another satellite ‘record low’. So what? Shouldn’t the focus be on the fact it’s happened before and makes bugger all difference to anything?

I look at it this way … Steven plays the poker hands the alarmists deal him or looked at another way the dealer picks the game and the alarmists picked sea ice and the Arctic is the wild card. Lots of bluffing going on at this stage of the game.

Reblogged this on CACA and commented:
“In 1977 the worst winter in a century struck the United States” ~ Leonard Nimoy materialises ‘The Coming Ice Age’ in the classic “In Search of…” television series that was broadcast weekly from 1977 to 1982.
“What scientists are telling us now is that the threat of an Ice Age is not as remote as they once thought. During the lifetime of our grand children, Arctic cold and perpetual snow could turn most of the inhabitable portions of our planet into a Polar Desert”!
Going on the latest 2013 Arctic Sea Ice data and record cold temps, it seems Dr Spock is more adept at climate science and forecasting than 97% of today’s climate scientists and their billion dollar computer models!

Ahh what short memories we have ~ yearning for catastrophe, driven by alarmism!

The storms were bad, yet not horrible. Buffalo, NY was the poster child of that alarmist special precisely because the cold winds across lake Erie cranked the snow belt snow machine into high gear. The weather patter that year just happened to have every storm front moving due east which is the worst case snow dump on Buffalo.

Buffalo’s record snow was the luck of the draw. Combination of warm lake and cold air and wind direction dictate where the snow belt dumps snow. (I live on the edge of the snow belt) And after the lake freezes over, Buffalo enjoys a normal Midwestern winter climate.

Lets hope they’re not following the plan to discharge particles into the atmosphere and reflect heat back into space bringing about cooling (Anthropogenic Global Cooling), as it sounds like we could use some more heat, not less. Given there has been no change in the ‘warming’ dialogue in the mainstream media, who would be surprised if the con-trail controversy turned out to be man playing God?

I have warm water flowing from my facuet, which clearly proves global warming and climate change. Now if you’ll just pay the carbon tax, I’ll give you non-polluters certificates and the polar bears will be safe once again.

Isn’t this graph and the claim a little misleading? The graph represents the “change from previous year” not an absolute area. If you reference the graphic at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/) you can see that total sea ice area for 2012 was very low–outside of 2 standard deviations in fact. 2013 is also on the very low side of what could be called average, but not as low as 2012. So what is the actual statement you are making about climate change?

Thanks for the reply Steven. It is true that the “graph is exactly what it says it is,” it is just the conclusions that are being drawn that I am a little uncomfortable with. It appears that you are saying that because this month’s Arctic Ice gain over the same time last year is the second largest on record, that this is some indication that there is not a continuing trend of less arctic ice, year over year. Is this what you are saying? If this is the case, then I don’t think you can draw this conclusion.

As I mentioned in my first comment, August 2012 saw an anomalously low Arctic Ice coverage. Also, if you take the dataset that was cited as your source, and import it into excel, graph it, and add a trend line, you see a fairly consistent downward trend. I will note that the last seven years have been quite inconsistent, but still trending downward. So my question is, on what basis do you claim that we are not heading for an ice-free Arctic in the near future?

Thanks for the prompt reply Steven. I think comparing today to a single date in the past and drawing a conclusion about the future is problematic. There is an observed downard trend in the data. Can you comment on this please?